Breaking the Word

Monday, April 07, 2008

Monday in the 3rd Week of Easter
Memorial of St. John Baptist de la Salle, Priest
Paschal Pattern and Person

Readings: Acts 6:8-15; Psalm 119:23-24, 26-27, 29-30; John 6:22-29
Picture: CC USRodeoSupply

Coincidentally, on a day when we celebrate the memory of the great educationist St. John Baptist de la Salle, our readings present us with what may be seen as a teacher’s problem. Consider first the situation of the psalmist. Faced with persecution, he asks the Lord to teach him to recognize and to remain faithful to the demands of God’s law. He asks to be taught to distinguish between two paths. Make me understand the way of your precepts, he begs. Remove from me the way of falsehood and favor me with your law. The way of truth I have chosen; I have set your ordinances before me. Learning to distinguish the way of truth from the way of falsehood, isn’t the concern of every Christian? How then does God go about answering such a prayer? How does God teach us to walk the way of truth?

Given the reference to the law, it is perhaps tempting to think immediately of a code, of a list of prescriptions or guidelines that seek to cover as many situations as it’s possible to conceive. It’s perhaps tempting to fall back on a model of education that emphasizes pure rote learning and regurgitation, whether of a set of prayers or scripture verses. Although there surely is a place for such forms of learning – we do at least need to know how to say our prayers, for example – God’s approach seems to have a different emphasis. Instead of focusing on the law as expressed in a code, God fulfills the law by embodying it in a person. As Jesus says in the gospel: Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life… This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent. To walk the way of truth has less to do with studying a code than with getting to know and to love a person.

This, however, doesn’t quite take us out of the woods, for Jesus no longer walks the earth the way he did before his passion, death and resurrection. We can’t see and hear, touch and interact with him the way the people in the gospel could. How then are we to get to know and love him? Especially for Catholics, a ready answer should probably spring easily to mind. As source and summit of our faith, the Eucharist is the privileged place where, as a people assembled by God, we encounter and interact with our crucified and risen Lord. But caution is still necessary, isn’t it? For isn’t it possible to come to the Eucharist with dispositions similar to those of the people in the gospel, who sought Jesus only because he could solve their problems? Or what about Stephen’s opponents in the first reading? Isn’t it possible to approach the Eucharist with a kind of obsession over trivial minutiae, which parallels their clinging to the customs that Moses handed down? We are, of course, far from advocating that anything goes. Even so, something else seems to be primary. We find a distinguishing mark of the Eucharist in the gospel reading for Holy Thursday, at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. After washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus tells them: I have given you a model to follow… Or, in another translation, I have given you an example so that you may copy… (John 13:15) Isn’t this model of the suffering servant the key distinguishing mark of the way of truth? Isn’t this also the paschal pattern that we see reproduced in the experience of Stephen in the first reading? And isn’t this the true challenge of Christian faith-formation? Like a tailor working with a dress stencil, or a blogger constructing a website with a blogskin or template, aren’t we called to learn to walk the way of truth by reproducing in our own lives the pattern and person of the One who suffered, died and was raised to life for us?

How are we being taught to do the same today?

2 comments:

AnonymousMon Apr 07, 08:50:00 pm GMT+8
Good evening Fr. Chris. You have such a way of teasing out a response from your reader by your perceptive weaving of the biblical text, challenging us.
Often times we get caught up with the form and forget the substance and in this case, it is the very living bread that we take at mass; reminding us of the dignity of our personhood.
How do we remain in the world and yet be out of it? It's like living in the present with an eye to eternity, clearly differentiating the essence from the fluff. Is it possible to be in a constant state of heightened awareness of God's presence in our every action.
To be sure, I must confess that there are more lapses than I care to recount. However each time I falter, I know that His grace is proffered without condition.
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AnonymousTue Apr 08, 08:21:00 am GMT+8
I was schooled (both primary and secondary) by the La Salle brothers, and it was in those early years that my faith formation first took root.

I can identify with the prayer of the psalmist because certainty is important to me. I want to know that what I do is pleasing to God. And yet the only certainty that confronts me is my own broken-ness.

As a teacher, my work is governed by codes of practice, manuals, guidelines, statutes, etc. To be honest, they are overwhelming and do not always produce the results they were intended to bring about in the first place. At the Eucharist, the Way exemplifies Christian servanthood and the Truth subsumes our brokenness in the Bread broken, as a code of practice for all to follow.

St John Baptist de la Salle, pray for us.
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Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. This is also the reason for the series of liturgical texts found in both the Roman Missal and The Liturgy of the Hours (Vol. III - IV), for Sundays and weekdays in this season. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, 43-44

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19